Execution threats against lawmakers are beyond the pale

Iwrite as a U.S. Army veteran to say the president’s death threats and the Pentagon’s investigation of Sen. Mark Kelly over a group video about the military’s responsibility to not follow illegal orders are an assault on the whole system of orders being followed properly (“ The death penalty should never be a political threat ,” Nov. 23).

In October 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, as a nuclear weapons specialist at a tactical missile outfit in then West Germany, I locked and loaded a nuclear warhead when the order came. Then, as the crisis wound down, when the order came to stand down, we unloaded the warhead. I and everyone around me had faith in the integrity of the orders we followed because we had faith in the entire chain of command.

Sen. Kelly’s comments concerned a small